Andrew Bolt: Burn the T-shirt, Molly, communism doesn’t work

What shocking timing for Molly Meldrum to get his Covid vaccine while wearing a T-shirt with a big picture of former communist butcher Che Guevara.

Good on Molly Meldrum for telling us to get vaccinated. But how can anyone trust a man who had himself photographed on Monday wearing THAT shirt when he got his jab?

What shocking timing for the pop guru to wear a T-shirt showing the communist flag of Cuba, on the very day that thousands of people all over Cuba were protesting against that dictatorship.

Those brave protesters had had enough of Cuba’s endemic poverty and the regime’s bungled handling of the virus. Some chanted “freedom” and “down with communism”.

Now more than 140 – including journalists, artists and dissidents – are missing or arrested after President Miguel Díaz-Canel called on supporters to “battle in the streets” to save communism: “The order to fight has been given – into the street, revolutionaries!”

To be fair, no one would accuse the nice Molly of being on top of foreign politics. His expertise is pop trends – and all his T-shirt really says is that it’s been fashionable to idolise symbols of Cuba’s enslavement.

But what colossal ignorance for Molly to choose a T-shirt that not only has a Cuban communist flag but a big picture of Che Guevara.

Guevara, the long-time idol of dinner-party revolutionaries and T-shirt sloganeers, is in fact the former communist butcher who slaughtered prisoners to impose a tyranny in Cuba which actually sent gays to forced labour camps.

Molly Meldrum getting vaccinated.

Yes, it was off to the camps for any Cuban Molly Meldrum. As the infamous Cuban Cultural Congress declared in 1971: “It was inadmissible that under the pretext of ‘artistic talent,’ notorious homosexuals should gain influence over our youth.” Long-time dictator Fidel Castro approved, saying gays could never be “true revolutionaries”.

But it’s not that our intellectual dilettantes saw what was going on in Cuba and said it was good. No, they saw with blind eyes.

Such people are so dazzled by their bright ideals and radiant goodness that they can stare at a dictatorship and call it free, at a white Bruce Pascoe and call him black, and now at a bearded man and call him a woman.

The bad news: many such people are journalists.

True, the days when Cuba was openly admired by the Left have slowly faded, but when Castro died in 2016 there was still love enough at the ABC for it to publish a hagiography with this headline: “Fidel Castro: Cuba’s bearded, cigar-smoking romantic revolutionary.”

The third paragraph told the lie: “To many, Castro – who died aged 90 – was a romantic revolutionary, a persuasive and moving speaker who had the affection of his people.”

But if Castro truly “had the affection of his people”, why did he never trust them to vote for him in an open election? Why did he never allow a free press? Why did more than 500,000 Cubans flee his tyranny?

Argentine-born revolution leader Ernesto Che Guevara and Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro. Picture: AFP

The closest the ABC came in that obituary – since amended – to conceding Castro created an oppressive dictatorship in 1959 was to note that this “charismatic, hands-on politician” was so “outraged by social injustice” that he was also “dictatorial”, with “a history of violent, forceful politicking”.

What a gutless way to refer to Castro having more than 3100 Cubans executed by firing squad.

That ABC obituary also promoted what apologists for the Cuban communist regime still often praise – that at least Cuba has “free healthcare” and sends its doctors to treat the world.

Cuba pushes this “doctor diplomacy” even in this pandemic. Check recent headlines: “Azerbaijan thanks for help of Cuban doctors in fight against Covid”, “Venezuela receives first shipment of Cuban coronavirus vaccine”, and, from our taxpayer-funded The Conversation: “The scene from Cuba: How it’s getting so much right on Covid-19.”

It is? Yet Cubans themselves are protesting now that virus infections have hit record levels, medicines are running out, some hospitals are without water for hours and others near collapse.

It’s all made worse by the bankrupt regime selling locally-made drugs and vaccines overseas for the dollars, and having no money to import medicines even for scabies. It also refuses to accept foreign aid.

So maybe some of those doctors Cuba exports to the world – also to earn foreign currency and show that communism “works” – should now race home, given this news from the virus front: “The BBC spoke to several Cubans who claim that their relatives died at home without the receiving medical care they needed.”

How many times must it be said: communism doesn’t work. Burn that T-shirt, Molly. Those guys are not on your side.